9 comments:

Probably why it is in an obscure publication called The Daily Telegram.I note it does have an xml feed. But, naturally, the editorial to which you link does not take comments.Agreed, it seems to be somewhat derivative in argument.

I could say I wonder at your working in what bloggers are pleased to call the "mainstream media," given your evident contempt for it. But that would be as silly as your comment. I have no contempt for blogs, merely for their arrogance and blind, unreasoning rage against the machine (the "mainstream media"). It is outrageously condescending, for example, to sniffily dismiss comments on blogging because they were printed in an "obscure publication called the Daily Telegram." Since when did an idea or a thought derive its worth or strength from where it originated? Would the same thoughts have been worthier had they come from, say, the editorial pages of the Washington Post? I could as easily dismiss an idea or suggestion merely on the ground that it appeared in a blog -- which, as I said, would be at least as "obscure" a source as a daily newspaper in the Upper Midwest.

I made no mention of its being from an obscure journal. I merely noted that it seemed derivative, whicvh I believe it is. I'd also like to see evidence that I hold the mainstream media in contempt. I simply do not hold it to be above criticism, or necessarily superior to all blogs. There are millions of blogs, Many are written by well-educated, well-informed people who can write well and think clearly. I have repeatedly pointed out that a category as vast as blogging simply does not lend itself to grand pronouncements. Each has to be judged on its own merits. I plan to say more, though, over the weekend. So stay tuned.

One of your correspondents said "it is in an obscure publication called The Daily Telegram," which was clearly my reference, since I put it in quotation marks in my previous response. Practically everything is derivative of something. It is not a terribly valid objection. Nearly everyone gets his or her ideas from somewhere else, including editorial writers at small daily newspapers. And bloggers.

It was me who called The Daily Telegram an "obscure publication", which surely it is? Nothing wrong with that. It is a simple descriptor.I have no general contempt for blogs or the "mainstream media", I coexist quite happily in both. There are good and bad examples of each.If the DT editorial had contained any new points, rather than cobbled together old ones, that might have given us something substantive and new to discuss. And if it had allowed comments, we could even have discussed the article over at the DT and reduced its obscurity a little bit ;-) (Or failing that, livened it up a bit.)

How people do persist in responding to a point different from that which was made. My objection was not that the Daily Telegram was called obscure, which of course it is to the Right and Left Coasts and points even farther east. My objection was to the arrogant implication that the comments were unworthy of attention simply because they appeared in an obscure publication. As I said several steps earlier, the same could be said of comments appearing in obscure blogs, the overwhelming majority of which are. But if such a dismissal of a blog were made in the MSM, cries of "arrogance" would ring all around the blogosphere, no matter how truly trivial or "derivative" those comments may have been. .